”He is a good player, but he’s a complementary player,” Oakley said about Garnett. “He went to a Paul Pierce team and won a championship (with the Celtics in 2008).”

Rome responded, “You’re right. He does a lot of hooting and a lot of hollering, but at the end of the day, is he a fake tough guy?”

“He’s not real tough,” Oakley said. “I wouldn’t put him in the top 10 tough guys, so you do the math. If you’re a real tough guy, you should be in the top five, top 10, but if you ain’t tough, it don’t count after 11.”

“Barkley, for his size, was a good player but he’s a coward,” Oakley continued. “He was a good player for his size, but he wasn’t a leader and wasn’t a role model.

“Now he talks so bad about younger guys. I don’t respect that from him. He’s a fraud. He can criticize all the younger kids and if he got something to say, call them and talk to them before you just blast them. He’s wants to be funny, that whole TNT thing and all that, they’re like some clowns on that show”

Oakley also compared Oklahoma City center Kendrick Perkins to Garnett because “all he does is holler and complain” and the Thunder could win championships if he would just play basketball. Oakley also said that Perkins’ attitude was the prime reason he was dunked on by Blake Griffin.

This isn’t the mean-spirited crankiness of a player wishing for a return to glory. He is remembered as the primary tough guy on the New York Knicks legendarily rugged 1994 team, where he earned All-Defense and All-Star team honors. Earlier, he served as Michael Jordan’s unofficial “enforcer” and was one of “His Airness’” favorite teammates during his career.

And he’s not holding any opinions back about some of the players he played with and others across the league he’s seen over the last few years.